Commodities Dealer Accepting Bitcoin for Gold

The revelations by Edward Snowden about the illegal wiretapping being carried out by the U.S government have made it clear that privacy is becoming a rare commodity. One company is taking that "commodity" notion literally. Agora Commodities is the first gold, silver, platinum, and palladium dealer accepting Bitcoin for bullion. We already know that you can buy Reddit Gold with it. This is the real thing.

Bitcoin, if you recall, is an untraceable digital "currency" based on increasingly complex mathematical formulas. The currency is extremely volatile, subject to even daily wild swings in value. It is not regulated by any official government organization. And can be used for all manner of illicit trafficking, especially on underground site like the Silk Road, a popular place to score illegal goods.

By taking Bitcoin as payment for a physical commodity, Agora is giving high-risk speculative traders one more way to play the market. And the added bonus is that the transaction can be 100% anonymous. The risk of using such a currency, especially now that it can be transferred to precious metals, raises all sorts of questions about money laundering, organized crime, theft by hackers, and whether terrorists will see this opportunity before regulators get their hands on it.

But the company is going even deeper into anti-spying territory than that. They are offering their customers encrypted service for all their digital correspondence.

Joseph Castillo, President of Agora Commodities commented, "In today's world, privacy is quickly turning into one of the people's most precious commodities. I was inspired by an ISP provider in Utah that refused to give his customers data over to authorities when it was not properly requested with a warrant. Agora Commodities first and foremost respects its customers' privacy. This was the best way to show that respect".

Questions about Bitcoin are already being asked in earnest in the halls of government around the world. But for now, we find ourselves in one of those heady days where something is loose in the world that has not yet been clamped down on and regulated. There are millions to be made, and someone sitting in a basement somewhere is hacking out the way to do it.